Letter: Bad design

Why do we end up simply taking the best of what developers are willing to give us?

Even if the Village Trailer Park developer agrees to provide additional affordable units, I would strongly encourage you to rethink this development agreement (DA). Assuming overriding issues of elderly eviction, landmarking, or conservation zoning are regrettably past history, this DA should still be rescinded when you consider the overwhelming design fallacies:

1. Access to 290 of 277 units (77 percent) from windowless 5-foot wide interior corridors which are 400 to 500 feet long ‚Äî truly an inhuman “quality of life.”

2. Garage circulation requires traveling in two subterranean levels as much as 2,000 feet ‚Ä¶ to reach an assigned space.

3. Lack of privacy and light in narrow canyon courtyards 225 feet long and twice as high as they are wide.

4. No open space that is not 100 percent concrete paved with raised or depressed planters and “potted” landscape.

5. Non-mitigated traffic impacts generating 2,200 daily trips!

6. Total lack of relationship to the adjacent neighborhood, which will result in reduced property values for those neighboring residents along with massive visual and traffic issues.

7. Community benefits that don‚Äôt address resulting educational and infrastructure needs which this project will create.

Why didn‚Äôt staff ever mention anything negative resulting from this design in their lengthy reports (other than traffic)? And, it‚Äôs also disturbing that the Planning Commission and Architectural Review Board don‚Äôt have the time to discuss these projects in the depth required. But clearly this project is way too dense with these design fallacies creating a slum-like environment.

Why should a developer‚Äôs smooth-talking, opportunistic ambition trump the common welfare? It is becoming all too apparent in our city that the wreckage from this type of ambition threads its way largely unchecked through our political and community life. And if we didn‚Äôt approve this much density, we wouldn‚Äôt need all the drastic parking provisions being proposed.

If the council accedes to an “affordable compromise,” it will truly be a community travesty. Please step back and think this through.

Alain de Botton wrote that “bad architecture is a frozen mistake writ large. We owe it to the fields and trees (and the homes we replace) that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.” And Le Corbusier stated “the fate of cities are made in town halls.” Please do the right thing and maintain this revocation.